#455 Excellent Executive Coaching: Why Organisations Need More Than Inspiration - Niels Brabandt interviews Ash Seddeek
Excellent Executive Coaching: Why Organisations Need More Than Inspiration
By Niels Brabandt & featuring insights from executive coach Ash Seddeek
Executive coaching has become one of the most in-demand yet least understood components of modern leadership development. For many organisations, it remains a paradox: widely recognised as essential, yet inconsistently applied, poorly evaluated, and often misunderstood. In a corporate world filled with self-proclaimed coaches, online “gurus,” and vague motivational promises, business decision makers face a critical question: What does excellent executive coaching actually look like?
In a recent leadership conversation between Niels Brabandt and internationally recognised executive coach Ash Seddeek, the two experts explored what distinguishes meaningful coaching from the noise surrounding it and why the stakes have never been higher for executives and the organisations they serve.
The Path to Coaching: Expertise First, Coaching Second
Ash Seddeek’s journey into executive coaching began not with a vague personal calling but with a career grounded in academic excellence, corporate experience, and communication expertise. From a Fulbright scholarship in applied linguistics to senior roles at Deloitte and Cisco, Seddeek developed a deep understanding of how leaders communicate and how dramatically communication skill levels can vary, even among C-suite executives.
His transition into coaching did not rely on inspirational rhetoric. It rested on credibility. Seddeek worked directly with top executives, supported major corporate events, and mastered the dynamics of high-stakes communication. When he eventually launched his coaching practice, his clients followed him organically, not because of branding, but because of trust.
In an unregulated industry where “anyone today can call themselves a coach,” this foundation matters.
How to Identify a High-Quality Executive Coach
In a market overflowing with options, many leaders feel paralysed by choice. As Seddeek notes, it is a classic case of choice overload: too many coaches, too little clarity. His first advice is simple but powerful: ask for verifiable references. A credible coach does not hide behind motivational slogans. They present testimonials, results, and direct contacts from previous clients.
Equally important is the coaching methodology. Seddeek practices the Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder-centered coaching approach, which involves gathering structured feedback from the client’s manager, peers, and direct reports. Coaching is not conducted in isolation. It is embedded in the real system of relationships that defines an executive’s success or failure.
For leaders seeking clarity, measurable outcomes are non-negotiable. Without clear goals, coaching becomes an expensive conversation rather than a developmental intervention.
Why Senior Executives Still Need Coaching
Many executives carry impressive resumes. They have risen through ranks, succeeded under pressure, and accumulated years of experience. Yet, as both Seddeek and Brabandt emphasise, seniority does not immunise leaders from weaknesses, especially when perception becomes the barrier.
At the executive level, career stagnation often stems not from lack of competence but from persistent perception challenges. A leader may be brilliant in strategy yet seen as unavailable, unclear in communication, or hesitant in high-level meetings. Coaching helps leaders address these perception gaps in visible and behavioural ways.
It is not about changing who they are. It is about ensuring others see who they truly are.
Structuring Coaching for Impact: Realistic, Sequential, Measurable
Exceptional coaching is not an inspirational sprint. It is a structured progression. Seddeek explains that engagements typically last six months or more, with biweekly sessions focused on one behaviour at a time.
For example, executives who struggle with speech fillers (“sort of”, “you know”) must first overcome that habit before refining storytelling, communication frameworks, or keynote delivery. The process mirrors athletic training: build foundational muscles first, then progress to advanced skills.
This sequential approach ensures that progress is visible, confidence increases steadily, and improvements are sustainable.
The Myth of the “Born Speaker”
Many leaders still believe that speaking skills are inherent, reserved for extroverted personalities. Seddeek rejects this notion. Once an individual becomes a leader, speaking is no longer about personal preference. It becomes part of their responsibility.
Leaders influence others with every word they speak. The goal is not performance but impact. Shifting the mindset from “I have to speak” to “I have a responsibility to inspire” transforms even reserved leaders into effective communicators.
When Organisations Lack a Coaching Culture
Even leaders who want professional coaching often encounter internal resistance. Some organisations still dismiss coaching as a luxury or rely on outdated advice: “read a book,” “watch a video,” or “coach yourself.” In these environments, leaders must learn how to present coaching as a strategic business investment rather than a personal request.
A compelling approach, as Seddeek notes, is to frame coaching within the broader goals of professional development, performance improvement, and leadership succession planning. Another practical strategy is using a hybrid model, group training with selective one-on-one coaching, which opens the door to coaching in organisations hesitant to invest in individual programs.
Where to Start: Practical Advice for Prospective Coachees
For executives considering coaching, the first step is not a search engine. It is a conversation—with HR or a trusted business partner. Many HR departments maintain a shortlist of vetted coaches. Speaking to multiple coaches before choosing one is essential to ensure personality fit, methodology alignment, and trust.
And, as Seddeek emphasises, any reputable coach should be able to offer references. The coaching relationship must be built on clarity, transparency, and proof of effectiveness.
The Future of Executive Coaching: Excellence, Ethics, and Measurability
The conversation between Niels Brabandt and Ash Seddeek highlights the maturation of executive coaching. The industry is moving away from unstructured, personality-driven interactions and toward evidence-based, behaviour-focused development grounded in stakeholder feedback. Organisations that embrace this shift gain a competitive advantage: better leaders, better communication, stronger succession pipelines, and higher organisational trust.
In an era marked by constant disruption, leadership requires more than competence. It requires clarity, communication, perception management, and behavioural integrity. Excellent executive coaching delivers precisely that.
The question for decision makers is no longer whether coaching matters.
The question is whether they will pursue coaching excellence rather than coaching convenience.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast & Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Coaching executives. You probably think I might have a boss who needs a bit of, let's say, coaching. The question of course is how do I find the right coach? Who is the right coach? How to do coaching? How to do executive coaching? And we have someone here with quite an impressive CV who got into coaching.
Hello and welcome Ash Siddique.
Ash Seddeek
Thank you so much for having me, Niels.
Niels Brabandt
Thank you very much for taking the time that we get straight into the interview. I mean, you come from, I think you went from Deloitte to Cisco. So really huge brands and they Then you get into this incredibly competitive and also non-regulated market of coaching where basically anyone can claim, I'm a coach and here I am. How did you get into executive coaching? What was your reason to go that way?
Ash Seddeek
That's a great question. So I was going to become an applied linguist coming out of Egypt and essentially really end up teaching English to Egyptians or Arabs in the Middle East. But I ended up coming to the US on a Fulbright scholarship to become a linguist and hopefully maybe become a university professor. But I actually found out that even in the US, similar to Egypt, people don't get paid as much teaching.
Niels Brabandt
That is correct. That is correct, yes.
Ash Seddeek
So I ended up working in the corporate environment and then got into training and development because it was very close to the teaching world. And that's really where I found out eventually at Cisco that communication is at the heart of everything that happens. And then when I left Cisco back in 2015, I started one client at a time, getting into coaching, went and got certification with the Marshall Goldsmith Organization, which is very stakeholder centered coaching approach. And that's really how I got started. A lot of the business I got initially was from a lot of people that I have worked with before. They knew that I had some interest in communications and the work that I did at Cisco working on the largest sales kickoff that happens annually, I ended up essentially interacting with the CEO of the company, the top 20 executives in the company. And of course, when you when you look at how they speak on the stage, you actually see a variety of levels of skill.
And I kept wondering, how can I level set that skill across the speakers succeeded with some of them, but definitely could see that many of them needed a lot of coaching in order for them to be able to come to the stage and act as the best among them. And that was really the genesis of how I got into coaching.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. So when you now say there's a wide range of skill sets around there, and many people, of course, might think, I think I need coaching. Somehow. But I think also many people are sitting there and think, I do not want to become one of the victims of these motivational, inspirational people who simply sell online classes, take the money and then just say, that was it. Thank you very much. Next. So how do I actually find the right coach when someone is now sitting here listening to this and saying, I think I need coaching, but the sheer amount of coaches out there make me so insecure, pretty much nothing else than a choice overload bias, where people say, if I have too much choice, I probably don't choose any one of them.
Ash Seddeek
I think that's a fair comment. And I do encourage people to ask the coach for some client testimonials. In my line of work, as I mentioned, we use this approach called stakeholder centered coaching, which means I would go into the organization and I would speak with people who work with Nils, maybe five of them, and I would basically ask each one of them, how would you like Nils to communicate with you? So I gather input. One of the people I speak with is Neil's manager and sometimes the HR business partner, because if I'm coaching a VP at Uber, I am talking with the circle of key people in their circle. And of course, within the engagement, we need to do midpoint touch points with those leaders and then eventually at the very end to make sure that, as you're saying, a successful outcome happens. There's something that we can verify.
So for example, if somebody Says, Ash, come and coach me. A lot of the time I go into these meetings with executives and my lips are tied.
I don't say a word. I don't know what's going on.
Can you help me unlock this? So we then work on that particular aspect. And then of course you'd hope that within six months of that engagement, that person goes into executive meetings. They come into the meeting with one or two questions that they can ask organically and be very genuinely interested in the discussion. And that now they feel that they can actually speak up and speak their mind. And feel that they have that confidence within those meetings. So I think that would be a very visible and I think sometimes the challenge is if you don't have a very visible metric that you're looking for, something that you want to achieve, then to your point, it's very wishy-washy and we don't really know what we're trying to make an impact on.
Niels Brabandt
Absolutely. However, when you now coach executives, let's face it, usually they have quite a career track record. They probably are quite strongly opinionated and they probably say, Ash, look, I still got hair. I am a VP at a large probably unicorns that is startup or even a corporation. So I think I did reasonably well here. How do you want to change these people's minds? Because they are not known to be easily influenced.
Ash Seddeek
Very good point. And what I actually see happen a lot of the time, it's interesting how at the very end of the day, it's a very small world in the sense that let's say if Neil's boss says, well, Neil needs to improve in a certain area, no matter how successful Neil is, Neil then takes that input and says, you know what? I have to act on it and show progress, because sometimes we're dealing with a perception issue and not necessarily a behavior issue. And I think to your point, people have been in Korea for a long time, they know that sometimes they are hitting a perception wall that they have to modify it. And then we have to come back and say, how can we visibly then get into that discomfort and show people around us that that perception they have is changing to the better? Because you're totally right, I think, especially at executive levels, a lot of the time it is a perception issue because they have already achieved so much success. And then for one reason or another, one perception pops up and then it kind of sticks with them and then it becomes very sticky and you want to hopefully get them unstuck in that area.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah, excellent. So now people say, okay, look, I get coaching, but I have a couple of goals I want to achieve. I want to get better at speaking, I want to get better at communicating within my executive team, I want to get better at talking to my people who I have in my team. And suddenly you have quite a wide range of goals that people want to achieve and usually Executives have very little time at their hand and they say, I want to achieve them as quickly as possible. So how do you manage expectations with people who certainly have high expectations towards what is going to be the outcome of the coaching process?
Ash Seddeek
Yeah, we come up with a, in my case, we come up with a minimum of six month engagement where we try to use a sequential progression process. So for example, in some cases, the person may be suffering from speech fillers. They say a lot of sort of, like, you know, every few seconds. So we, I then as a coach have to say honestly, the first thing we should do is we need to work on the speech fillers, get past that challenge first, and then we can come back and talk about communication structures that can help them deliver a succinct and organized message. So as we build up each one of these muscles, then we can start saying, you know what? I heard you talking about a lot of things. I can see that are some amazing stories in your journey that we can build a keynote around.
And that can become a keynote that they can deliver internally first. And then we can come back later and talk about how can you become a thought leader who goes out and speaks at conferences, for example, or gets on panels. So we try to bring some of that realism that realistically we have to.
Niels Brabandt
Go through that gradual progression.
Ash Seddeek
Yeah.
Niels Brabandt
What do you do with people who say, look, with the whole speaking thing, I just don't have the extra version. I know some of my colleagues on the board love to be on stage and I'm just very good at, for example, let's say finance. I'm just the person who loves to be in the background. I know I have to get on that stage once or twice a year. However, it's nothing I genuinely enjoy. Do you think anyone is able to become a great speaker? Do you think there are limitations for some people?
Ash Seddeek
I'm more of a positive, I think, almost everybody can. And what I actually tell them is that once you become a leader, it is no longer about you. And that is the genesis of us understanding that now all of a sudden, it's my role to inspire others. It's my role to show others that they can accomplish what I have accomplished. And it's this moment where we tell the leader, you need to become more of a coach. And your speaking is the platform that you use to inspire others. And once they sort of get out of that equation where they're thinking about themselves mostly, I say, you know what?
We have to change that because now you're someone that actually people look at and every word you say either is going to make somebody's day or is going to ruin somebody's day because oh my God, my boss said that, my boss said that. And you have to help them understand the impact of the words.
Niels Brabandt
Very good. And when we talk about time, let's say someone thinks about getting into getting into having a coach, what is the usual timeframe you say is a good start? When people say, Hey, should I do it weekly or twice a week for six months or 12 months? What do you think is? Of course, this heavily depends on the goal you want to achieve and where you start. No question about that. However, what is the usual timeframe where you say this is a good starting and end point for a serious coaching approach?
Ash Seddeek
Yeah, most of the time it's a biweekly cadence which allows us to come up with one area to work on and then we have an opportunity of two weeks to work on. This particular area. Sometimes we try to also make it based on there is an upcoming meeting, like in the example of Uber, I was working with one VP and she used to go and talk in front of the board of directors. It was a quarterly exercise. So a lot of the time, the cadence of my meetings with her were very quarterly, maybe two to three times right before that meeting. So depending on the the coachy, we may customize the plan, but on average, it's a bi-weekly cadence and you want to make sure that You also decide what are some of the micro results that we would look for because you want people to feel there is progress and momentum along the way.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. When we now say, let's say someone sits here, listens to this and thinks, I think I should get a coach. However, I don't know how to get hurt within my organization because we don't have a culture of coaching. And as soon as I approach my boss, my leader, they probably say, oh, this is reasonably expensive. I think you probably should just read a book about this or look at this YouTube video or just do something else than spend spending money on coaching. And then usually you hear this phrase like, you know, anyone today is a coach.
Just coach yourself. What do you think? How can people get hurt when they say, I want to have a coach, but when I talk to the decision makers in my organization, I don't get hurt by them because we don't have a culture for coaching at the moment.
Ash Seddeek
Great point. What I have started seeing recently, like right now, I'm having very good momentum with Cisco, where I had to shift in some cases what I position as an offering. Instead of offering one-on-one coaching purely, I have now started to offer a training program that has on the back end of it some one-on-one coaching. So if they are in this decision-making position, they can opt for something that looks like this format where there is a number of sessions for, let's say, a group of 15, and then we can select six people that are going through the program. For the one-on-one coaching. So I would advise listeners to go and ask the leadership team for what's the budget that's available for professional development. And if they would be open to having them use coaching as the approach for getting some of that done, especially when they can articulate the business case for there are certain aspects of my leadership that I'd love to work on with a coach on a one-on-one basis.
And I think sometimes that confidentiality is sometimes what's so precious that that the business case may be built for it that way.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. To wrap this all up, when someone is now listening to this and says, okay, I think I really should do this, however, I really don't know where to start.
Should I just Google coaches? Should I approach HR? Should I just try to contact someone by myself and then bring this to some of my board members? What do you think is the best starting point to really get into coaching to wrap this interview up?
Ash Seddeek
A lot of the time, like let's say at Uber, for example, I see leaders talking with the HR business partner. Sometimes the HR business partner will have access to two or three coaches. And I think it's always a good idea to talk to more than one coach before deciding which one you might want to work with. I think good coaches should also be able to give you references of people that have gone through the coaching experience who are willing to speak to the value they received out of the coaching. And of course, they can call me or Neils if they needed a coach to talk to because of course, I'll be more than happy to talk people through the process or give them some guidance or even share other coaches that I'm working with as well.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. I think these are the perfect final words. Just to add this, if people now think they want to get in touch with you, how can they reach out?
Ash Seddeek
Ash@Executivegreatness.Com is my email ID. The website is communicatewithclarity. co is the program that I'm currently offering, which is a training program with a back end of one-on-one coaching. We can also do coaching groups as a result of that, but that should be very easy for them to reach out. Reach out to me that way.
Niels Brabandt
Perfect. These are the perfect final words. We see executive coaching is more important than ever. So at the end of this interview, there's only one thing left for me to say. Ash, thank you very much for your time.
Ash Seddeek
Thank you so much, Neils. Great to be on your show. Thank you so much.